Because unlike the so-called yellow bin or the yellow sack, the contents of which are already largely sorted and recycled, residual waste mostly ends up in the incinerator or landfill - with correspondingly negative consequences for the climate.

For this reason, plastics manufacturers have long been thinking about how they can improve the climate footprint of the value chain - and are increasingly relying on the recycling of plastic waste so that less CO2 is released into the atmosphere through incineration. But the proportion of the total volume is small: According to estimates, far less than 20 percent of all plastic waste in Germany is further processed into recyclate.

No plastic problem, just a lack of waste management

In order to finally get the plastic mountain under control, various single-use plastic products, including cutlery and crockery, straws and cups, have been banned in the EU since the weekend. In the industry, however, there is skepticism as to whether the problem can be solved in this way - or whether this would not result in a shift to other materials that even increase the overall amount of waste.

Markus Steilemann, CEO of the materials manufacturer Covestro , recently said in the Handelsblatt podcast Green : "The ban can certainly mean that fewer single-use plastic products are placed on the market." have a poorer carbon footprint. The company does not have a plastic problem, "it is the waste management problem that we have to solve," said the manager.

The authors of the Eunomia study also see the plastic itself less as a problem for the climate. Because the CO2 is only created when the plastic is disposed of in a waste incineration plant. To prevent this, plastics should be screened out of the waste stream in an upstream process and then reused. But it's not as easy as it sounds - also for economic reasons.

"One problem with increasing the recycling rate is that recycling is actually not a viable business model at the moment," says Handelsblatt , Volker Rehrmann, head of the recycling and circular economy division at Norwegian sorting system manufacturer Tomra , who commissioned the study from Eunomia. After all, that is slowly changing, according to the manager. "We can see that customers are quite willing to pay a higher price for recycled plastic than for newly produced plastic."

More on the subject:

• Covestro boss in the Handelsblatt podcast: Can there be a world without plastic?
• Lego presents building block prototypes made from recycled plastic
• "Plastic capitalism is coming to an end"

It works with the drinks

The German deposit system for one-way bottles shows that the recycling of plastics works well under the right framework conditions: Numerous manufacturers have now switched to making their bottles from 100 percent recycled plastic, including industry giants such as the food manufacturer Danone (Volvic) or the beverage giant Coca -Cola .

Rehrmann von Tomra hopes to achieve such quotas in other plastics areas through closer cooperation between the individual companies along the value chain. "In the past, the individual participants in the value chain have rarely spoken to each other, we want to network the industry more closely," said Rehrmann.

Because the recycling rate could be improved with individual products or modules, but the full effect only results from an overall concept that covers the entire raw material cycle. Politicians are also helping: "With incentives such as a higher CO2 price or an EU-wide plastic tax on new products, recycling is now becoming more and more economical."